Fender still make Esquires?

Placidcasual79

I saw a cream Esquire through the window of a closed guitar shop this afternoon - it looked in good nic. I am assuming it'll be second hand.

What does a three way sector switch do guitar with one pick up?

I have a single cut tv yellow LP special I might offer as part ex..... 

Babones

Pickup without tone control in circuit.
Pickup with tone control in circuit.
Pickup with tone in circuit, with an added bass capacitor,

HAL9000

To my knowledge, Fender no longer make Esquires. However, it's not difficult to get hold of an Esquire scratchplate so converting a normal Tele should be pretty easy. Also, RockRabbit sell Tele control plates without the slot for the three-Way so you could, if you wanted, build an Esquire-alike but without the funny circuitry.

Moss

They did a Mexican made Esquire until fairly recently - I guess it'll be one of those 

Placidcasual79

Moss said:

They did a Mexican made Esquire until fairly recently - I guess it'll be one of those 

Must be for that price mustn't it..... you ever played one? It had quite a heavily lacquered neck. 

@Babones - thats interesting - so it'd be very bright without tone control in the circuit?

stimpsonslostson

The no tone position is VERY bright, but it's useful if you need to cut through the mix. 

I play an Esquire a lot but mine has an Eldred harness from OilCity in it. My position one has a capacitor that gives a cocked wah kinda tone. It's brilliant with drive. 

If you're interested in trying an Esquire, I'd suggest starting by finding a Tele you like and then modding it yourself. It's easy & totally reversible. 

Funkfingers

+1 for modifying. 

Except in the very earliest production period, a Fender Esquire amounted to a Telecaster without the second pickup installed. The pickup rout and cable channel are present and correct but empty. The pickguard lacks the cutout for the neck/Rhythm position pickup to poke through.


The Eldred mod replaces the third muffled, "pretending to be a bass guitar" selector switch option with a tone network that sounds honky - as if playing through a cocked wah pedal.

For side-by-side coil hum-cancelling Tele replacement pickups, the switch can be reconfigured to offer series/single/parallel coil interconnection.

For the Seymour Duncan custom shop '53 Tapped Tele pickup, the switch would select between full output, reduced output and (probably) the Eldred mod.

guitars4you

Babones said:

Pickup without tone control in circuit.
Pickup with tone control in circuit.
Pickup with tone in circuit, with an added bass capacitor,

as above - but in the 'treble' switch position with no tone control in the loop means a slight extra bite/top end - so fixed treble voice
in the 'rhythm' position the tone is fixed by a big capacitor so very deep low voice
middle position is conventional with variable tone pot working as you know it

There are plenty of tweaks and mods available with one or two hinted above

crunchman

HAL9000 said:

To my knowledge, Fender no longer make Esquires. However, it's not difficult to get hold of an Esquire scratchplate so converting a normal Tele should be pretty easy. Also, RockRabbit sell Tele control plates without the slot for the three-Way so you could, if you wanted, build an Esquire-alike but without the funny circuitry.

The Custom Shop do. Go spend lots of money!

ICBM

The recent Mexican Classic Series one is an excellent guitar - I'm not sure if they did it in the Nitro Lacquer version as well.

As already said you can convert any Telecaster simply with a new pickguard though.

My favourite Esquire switching option is to simply remove the switch - leaving the empty slot looks better than no slot, to me - and wire it as a plain volume/tone setup.

Evilmags

Custom shop does them. 

JezWynd

The recent Mexican versions were very good, quite similar to the 50's Classic Tele in feel and (the one I tried) very lightweight.

Placidcasual79

JezWynd + @ICBM ;

Yes - I think this must've been the recent Mexican version - it did seem similar to the 50's classic. 

@stimpsonslostson - thank you. Thats interesting. I play in a ska band with four horns and keys etc, so bright, clean and cutting through the mix are up my street. 

stimpsonslostson

No problem. I find the Eldred mod much more useable than the normal "bassy" esquire wiring. 
Heres a demo of it: 


there are lots of wiring diagrams online if you want to have a bash yourself, but the harness I got from Ash is great & worth every penny (I was needing to upgrade the cheap pots & wiring in my guitar so it was cost effective to get it all from OilCity in one go).